Secrets of the sea … Hetti sees things in the glass washed up on the beach. Photograph: Lizzie Shepherd/Rex Features

If you've ever caught yourself wishing you could be a teenager again, then I heartily recommend a short course of Tim Bowler novels. The adolescents in his works have a rough time of it - they're oppressed by adults, bullied by their contemporaries, tortured by glimpses of mysterious, numinous worlds beyond this one, and generally racked by confusion and angst.

Fifteen-year-old Hetty, the central character in Sea of Whispers, has all these problems and a few more to boot. She lives with her grandmother on a small island in an unnamed archipelago that sounds like a combination of the Orkney islands and the Isles of Scilly, her parents having died at sea when she was one. A boy she has known all her life has developed an unwelcome crush on her, but she is troubled by something far worse than his puppyish eagerness to please.

For Hetty has visions, disturbing glimpses of faces in the broken pieces of old bottles - "sea-glass" - she collects from the beach. Her big mistake was to tell people about this we soon discover that most of the islanders think she's a bit of a nutcase, especially the older generation. No one will listen to her when she wants to tell them about her latest vision, and her conviction that what she has seen through a glass darkly could be a sign of something very important.

More complications ensue when a strange old lady is shipwrecked on the island. The older generation instantly decides that she's some kind of malevolent witch and a threat to the community's safety, even though she is comatose. Hetty, however, feels a bond with her and dedicates herself to helping her recover, but has to deal with a level of simmering discontent among the island's grumpy grey-hairs that looks likely to lead to a lynching.

The tension builds, and Hetty eventually makes a surprising decision – she takes on a sea of troubles in a voyage of her own and by opposing, hopes to end them. The story is about that perennial problem for teenagers: what should Hetty do with her life? Should she sink under the burden of the past, or strike out in a new direction? Yet Hetty is no Hamlet. She may be sensitive and confused, but when push comes to shove, she turns out to be very decisive.

Of course, this sort of story might easily tip into pretension and purple passages, and there's a dark, brooding intensity in the characters and their relationships that could feel unrelenting. Bowler studied Swedish at university, and his work often reminds me of Ingmar Bergman's films. There certainly aren't many jokes - everything in the narrative is there to explore some fundamental themes of human existence, and it's pretty serious stuff.

It has two saving graces, though. The first is the writing, which is simple, straightforward and often beautiful - landscapes, characters, events are all brought vividly to life. The pacing is brilliant, too, scenes of intense activity or high emotion intercut with much slower-burning sequences. Hetty's long sea journey with the old woman is particularly memorable.

Just as important is Bowler's understanding of how tough it is to be stuck between childhood and being an adult. It's almost worth being a teenager again to enjoy books like his - almost, but not quite.